I’ve really been in a creative slump under lockdown. All that time, no motivation. I forced myself to do some drawing today- just some simple sketches of some ceramic sculptures by Sophie Woodrow that I’d admired. I think it did me some good.
Tag: sketchbook
Mycenaean Grave Goods
I was tidying up and found some bits from art school ten years ago. Here’s some preliminary sketches I did for a project based on Mycenaean artefacts. Rather than draw direct, I drew various motifs on some acetate with marker, and then held it on the cyanotype paper with glass to expose the pictures. These prints were not the final project, I don’t know where that has gone. They were more preliminary exploration work.
Ink Master Copies
I had a whole folder full of artwork masters, so I decided to stick them into sketchbooks this afternoon (these kraft paper folio-sized books are around £6 from Muji). I tend to draw the line artwork by hand with a non-photo blue pencil and posca marker, and correct mistakes/add the colour digitally.
2012 sketchbook
While clearing up, I found an old sketchbook from 2012. Here’s some photos of some pages.
Planetary Urbanisation
Yesterday I went to a talk at Well Projects from anthropologist/sound artist Dimitrios Bormpoudakis from the University of Kent as part of A Cut From Sharp Grass, “a visual art exhibition & series of public events developed in response to the increasingly urbanised, networked & technologically integrated landscape of Kent”. Here’s my sketchbook notes from the talk.
Feral Practice
Earlier this week I went to a free art workshop hosted by Open School East. Open School East is a combination art course/residency and students are required to organise public art workshops. This time environmental artist Fiona MacDonald aka Feral Practice was the visiting artist. There was a talk about ants and fungi and the aim of “meeting with animal/plant/place through the processes and reflexivity of art”, and then we went out into a local park with a woodland area to do some classic sensory/location art activities. Here are my sketchbook pages and some snaps from the day.
British Museum Sketches
Here’s some more old sketchbook pages I scanned, this time from the British Museum.
A magician calls
Another old sketchbook page I scanned in. This one is from a couple of years ago. I was teaching on a residential course for teenagers. It was in an old nunnery in the middle of nowhere, so the staff organised a lot of evening activities and film showings to keep them amused. One night a magician came to do a show, and I made these notes.
Ghost Notes
Earlier in the summer I went on a ghost tour of Cambridge via work, and I took these notes.
Procrastinating in my limited spare time . .
I should be doing more of this, but instead I’m working very long hours at the dayjob. I’m either being a hermit, or trying to squeeze in some sort of social life. I hate rigidly scheduling things in my personal life, let’s leave that to work.
Visual Diary
As part of my MA, we were required to keep a creative diary keeping track of the professional practice lectures, research, reading, exhibition visits and general inspiration. I finally got around to scanning some of the one from my second year. In the first year I used blog posts for the same purpose, but I felt the need later on for a physical record.